William Fichtner Quotes

As writers, we must keep throwing problems at our characters. Conflict is the heart of good storytelling. Hiking in nature along a twisting trail can remind us what a good story feels like. It's the opposite of a treadmill - or an interstate highway.

"Prison Break" has been a really great experience because of the writers. I think that in television, you can have great directors, really good actors, but if it's not on the page... I think a series lives and dies in writing.

When you talk about a character on a situation comedy, it's not just the actor. It's the writers, too.

Getting a script and being like, 'Oh, yeah, I can do this in my sleep.' Who wants to do that? So, finding something that is a real challenge and is going to take all of you, I think, is more rewarding by the end of it.

Every film I've done, I've tried to pick ones where I can learn.

In the digital space, writers and directors get time to build and establish a character.

Yes, writing a novel, my boy, is like driving pigs to market - you have one of them making a bolt down the wrong lane; another won't get over the right stile.

I think the writer is always the creator, because he's starting with nothing, but the actor comes in and gives flesh and blood.

I like to work with actors that have varied experiences. But I don't choose them because of their experience, I choose them because of qualities I think would make an interesting character and to me there is no one way to direct actors, there is only one way to collaborate with one person.

You want to have the experience. As far as the creative side, the more I do this, the more I know that it's all about the writing. You got on a film sometimes and it's sort of half-written, and they expect and think that the actor's job is to bring the extra part and the good part. It's not. We're good at saying what other people have written, but for the majority of it, that's about it, comedians aside. It's all in the writing. Whether that's dialogue or character, or whatever, it doesn't matter. As long as they've done something special, than you can do something special.

Every creative person, and I think probably every other person, faces resistance when they are trying to create something good...The harder the resistance, the more important the task must be.

I think if I pick the right thing to spend my time doing, then time moves differently, because I really can get fully immersed in things and feel very alive and challenged, but in a good way. I feel a sense of progress.

You come up with a story line, you hire the writer, the director, the stars, the set designer.

I'm really excited to act again because when I started out, there was an innocent sort of perception of the world that was coming though me, and I think now through a lot of experience and life and understanding, I've come full circle to having a purer response to things. So my craft will be really interesting to work from this place because I think acting is about being in tune with yourself - or maybe the struggle to be in tune with yourself.

Everybody knows Aaron Sorkin's scripts. There's a huge amount of lines. There's a huge amount of interchange. You gotta do a lot of learning to be able to get it up to pace.

That's one of the reasons I take a lot of consolation in fiction. You have years to work on it. I think that allows you to reach for the best part of your reader instead of a lot of the internet stuff, in which you're kind of reaching for the worst or the most shallow part of your reader.

It's really nice when you can sit down with somebody and just talk to them, and talk about your ideas and what you think the character is, and they respond to it. It's a really nice way to do it, but it doesn't happen very often.

When I'm editing, I try to bring out some dramatic structure. I think it is about theater in some way; it is a little play.

I don't think it is possible to give tips for finding one's voice; it's one of those things for which there aren't really any tricks or shortcuts, or even any advice that necessarily translates from writer to writer. All I can tell you is to write as much as possible.

I think it's just the challenge. It's not that all my life I've wanted to do characters [in Marvel] , because I never particularly thought about it, but the challenge of saying, "How could they be done differently that may be more absorbing or more effective?"

When I'm writing a script, before I can write dialogue or anything, I have two or three hundred pages of notes, which takes me a year. So, it's not like "what happens next." I've got things that I'm thinking about but I don't settle on them. And if I try to write dialogue before then, I can't. It's just garbage.

As a storyteller, I think where working in television can almost be like lifting weights - you really have to know what your story is about.

I think that there is no doubt that every experience you have in your life, whether it's playing a character or something else, you bring that to the work.

It's great to write for actors when you know who they are. I think I prefer it.

I can't trace thematic similarities between Then We Came To The End and The Unnamed to a life event; I think it's more just a natural progression as a writer. Everything changes in the second book - tonally, character-wise, situationally - and on top of that, I think I wanted a challenge. I wanted to see if I could do it.